In this episode of Vocal Tips in 10, I’m breaking down the real role of the tongue in singing—why it matters, how it can sneakily interfere with your vocal freedom, and what to do about it. You’ll learn how to spot the signs of tongue tension, apply simple release exercises, and understand when your tongue isn’t the root of the problem (even if it feels like it is).
Whether you’re actively dealing with vocal tension or just want to sing with more ease and control, this episode is packed with practical, body-aware tools to help you unlock a freer, healthier sound.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
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Hello everybody. Welcome to Vocal Tips in 10. Thank you for being here and thank you for listening. I'm jumping into a topic today that comes up with great frequency when working with singers, and that is tongue tension.
when you are somebody who uses your voice athletically like a singer does, day in and day out, we are asking a lot from our tongues. We already use them for speaking, right? And swallowing and they carry a heavy load for all of us, singer or not. But if you are a singer, especially if you are doing, let's say powerhouse singing and some belting and mixing, that takes a decent amount of tongue engagement.
So I feel like tongue tension gets such a bad rap and yet, I don't blame the tongue for being tense. We ask it to work for us all the time. And then the times we don't want it to work so much and it shows up, we're like, what are you doing? Why are you here? And it's because we give it the signal.
to work, work, work, work, work. So it's not the tongue's fault. Let's not blame the tongue. The tongue is our friend. And what I want to talk about today is ways to see if tongue tension might be a piece of the puzzle for you. And then exercises and things you can do if that's the case to help release that tension so that the tongue can get engaged. We need it to be active and have energy, but it can get engaged and have quote, end quote tension.
when and how we need it to.
in a number of ways. One of them can be when a singer is going for that higher note many times with more power either at or right above the break, beyond the break. And all of a sudden the singer feels like they hit a ceiling. It gets kind of squeezy feeling in the throat. And then almost always I feel like if the tongue is involved,
The other thing I hear from the singer is, yeah, I just have no breath there. My breath is really bad. And most of the time, I don't find the breath to be the problem. I find that the root of the tongue has way more engagement than it needs. It curls back. When it curls back, it cuts off access to our vocal tract, or at least partially.
cuts off access. So the vocal tract, in case you don't know, you've got your vocal folds here in your larynx. It's just the tube that starts at the vocal folds and ends at the mouth. And that vocal tract ideally needs to be fairly open so that the air can flow freely from the lungs through the vocal folds out of the mouth carrying the sound. When the tongue curls back, it can cut off a lot of access to that tube. So it's not that you don't have good air, it's that the air isn't able to fully make its way out.
So that's one of the big warning signs for me. Another one, if a singer has major articulation problems, they really have a hard time articulating, quickly and lightly. That can mean a more engaged tongue than we need. Somebody who also struggles with a lot of agility, they've got the notes, but when they go to actually do the riffs and runs, they feel weightier than they would like, and they're not sure why. Many times that can be the tongue.
There's a number of other ways that tongue tension can rear its lovely head. But a good way to test if you have tension, feel like, is to do a little exercise I call extended tongue. All you're going to do, watch yourself in a mirror, or I'm here watching myself on a screen. If you want to see me do this, just know you can watch this episode on YouTube like you can watch every episode on YouTube. And I'm going to say, bleh. Uh-huh, it sounds lovely. And when I say, bleh.
I'm extending my tongue. I don't want to hyper extend it. I'm not looking to trade one area of tension for another. I'm just relaxing it out. Most of us, the tongue at least covers the bottom lip, usually rounded on the bottom, not everybody, but if it's really pointy, you can see kind of tension within it. We're hyper extending. So you're just kind of unfurling your tongue. I like to use the analogy of kind of if I grabbed my leg and I stretched it out to the side of me,
I'm just kind of tabletop. I would be like, huh, I don't really do that very often. My muscles would feel the stretch, but it wouldn't hurt. It's not overdoing it. If I grabbed my leg and pulled it up by my ear, I'm hurting something. Something is getting torn. That's excessive. That's hyper extending. So you're just going to say, blah, extend your tongue, looking in a mirror to kind of watch that happen. Most of us, it's going to cover your bottom lip. And then let's say I'm going to sing a pattern. I'm just going to do triads here.
1-3-5-3-1 with the tongue extended. We need the tongue to articulate. The tongue can be, like I said, a really big shaper of our vocal tract. We don't need it to phonate. And all that means is we don't need the tongue for our vocal folds to connect and vibrate and make sound. So ideally, I should be able to have that tongue extended out and have it stay out while I sing.
Again, if you're on YouTube, you get to see my lovely tongue here. If you're not, you can check it out on YouTube or hopefully listening helps. But what I'm looking for is that tongue to just stay out and relaxed and I can work that through my range. When you can tell if you've got some tongue tension that you might want to address is the tongue does something I lovingly call the scared turtle. It goes to immediately like, curl right back into your mouth.
when you go to sing, or it might not be that dramatic, but all of a sudden you can see your whole bottom lip. Well, then that lets us know that the root of the tongue is not staying relaxed as we're singing, it is starting to curl back, which certain types of singing, we want it to do that, but singing just, ⁓ right, a relaxed vowel on a triad and easy parts of our range, wanting no specific tonal quality, ideally it should be able to stay out and relaxed. So that's a really good check-in.
to see do I have tension in my tongue? And what I like to do too is take it to the lower part of the range, see what happens there, take it up to a little bit higher part of the range. Almost always if somebody's gonna have an overactive tongue, you're gonna really see it kick in around that break area. Does that mean anything horrible and terrible if yours goes to curl in? Not at all. It is nothing to have a major stress about. It's about building awareness. You look at it and go, ⁓ okay.
that could be one of the reasons why my break is feeling a little more difficult to maneuver. So I need to give my tongue some love.
I need to give it some stretches, some massage, some exercises to teach it when to relax. So therefore it will engage and have that quote unquote tension. Tension always sounds like a bad thing, but another word for tension is engagement. We need it and ask of it from the tongue all the time. We just want it to happen when we want it to happen. We want to be in control of it.
So if you are a person that realizes you have some tension there, what are some things you can do? Let me give you a few different
stretches, massages, and exercises.
So the first thing I love to do is that exercise I just gave you, extended tongue. You can just do it stretching the tongue out. I love to do that. I can really feel kind of the stretch almost right at the larynx. I can have a decent amount of tongue tension myself because I'm using this thing all the time. If I'm not singing or talking, I'm eating or drinking or sleeping. ⁓ So she gets a lot of work. So I like to just do the extended tongue exercise, just stretch it out, pitched or not pitched.
You can put it on basic scale patterns. You can take it one note up and down your range. I also love to take extended tongue into songs. If you're working through a section and you're having a tough time, can you do it with that tongue extended out? If you can't and it starts to curl in, okay, well then we know that's a piece of the puzzle. But also getting that stretch in that part helps release the tongue some, gets those vocal folds working on their own. I love that one. Another great little exercise kind of stretch that you can do.
is you're gonna close your mouth and your tongue is going to lick your teeth in circles. So it's gonna lick the top teeth and the bottom teeth clockwise. I like to do about five or six of those one direction and then counterclockwise, licking the teeth top to bottom. So I'm gonna do a couple of them for you guys watching me on YouTube, for you guys listening. It's quiet because I'm licking my teeth. So let me do a tongue circle for you, clockwise and counterclockwise. Again, depending on the level of your tongue tension,
You can just do these without any pitches at all. When they start to feel better, you can take it on a five note scale. You can take it on sliding intervals. You can add singing to it. Another thing I love to do is give myself a little bit of massage right at the root of the tongue. We so often just think of the tongue as the thing we extend when we go bleh. But the root of the tongue is this big muscle, right? Our tongue is almost like a quad just popped up on top of our larynx
It's pretty amazing. It is a meaty, big, strong muscle. It needs to be for everything we ask it to do. So all I want you to try and do is take your thumb, you're gonna place it gently on the bone of your chin. So I'm touching the bone right underneath my chin, and I'm just gonna move right behind it. And that should be, I'm massaging it right now, kind of a mushy little pocket. Ideally, when everything's totally relaxed, it kind of feels like jello. I will just tell you, mine never feels like jello. Right now, as I'm massaging this.
It feels like jello with a little rope in there. And the rope is my tongue. That's some tension. You never want to take more than your thumb to do that massage because I don't want it to get all swollen and then you're cursing my name. But just some gentle massage there at the root of the tongue can really help. And then another exercise that I love, a couple different ones you can play with, they're both SOVTs One of them is a raspberry. That's where you stick your tongue out.
And the other one is a tongue trill. That's like a rolled R. Again, you can take these on sliding intervals.
you can take them on scale patterns. You can use them in all kinds of ways. Those are a few different ways that you can start to bring awareness to the tension in your tongue and start to work to release that tension.
I hope this is helpful, guys. I have a free training right now, all about movement, 25 different tools to help you from warmup to technique to performance to cool down. You can try two weeks of my Vocal Pro membership for absolutely free.
And you can book a free consultation with me or my fab coach, Eva Cassell. Like always, I will put all of that in the show notes. Happy singing everybody and see you next episode. Bye.
